Taufik Hidayat: Is the star burning out?

With 24 career titles in 11 years Taufik Hidayat is rightly regarded as one of the finest players in modern badminton. Yet his star is on wane, and with the London Olympics on the horizon, the Indonesian needs a late pick-up to turn around a torrid year.

At the age of 30 Hidayat is not getting any younger – there have long been retirement plans, stretching back four years, when he should still have been in his prime – meaning that 2012 is likely to be his final chance to recapture the lost glories that have included some of the biggest tournaments on the world calendar.

Only a single game was dropped throughout the 2004 Olympics, Taufik cruising to the gold medal with a comfortable 15-8 15-7 victory over Shon Seung-mo, cementing a place within the sports elite. The World Championships in Anaheim followed a year later, but those illustrious pasts are exactly that, adding to the pressure for one last hurrah when the eyes of the badminton world focus on Wembley Arena next July.

The current struggles began following this year’s Korean Open, Taufik finishing in a defeat to eventual winner Lin Dan in the Seoul quarter-finals. The All England Championships, arguably the most prestigious of the Super Series tournaments, were just around the corner, though a first round loss to unseeded Kazushi Yamada left the Indonesian feeling sorry for himself.

Early exits followed in India and Singapore, while a respectable quarter-final loss to Peter Gade back at his home Super Series event looked fairly respectable, given the circumstances that had preceded it. To the home faithful, however, it was a disappointment.

For almost a decade Hidayat has been touted as the face of Indonesian badminton; the star with the forthright power, deft touch and demon backhand, a star that the nation has not seen since Rudy Hartono and his eight All England titles back in the 1970s.

He has the hopes of an entire nation on his shoulders, Hartono himself telling Today Online that Simon Santoso, the second ranked Indonesian, is simply ‘not a world-class player’. One of the superpowers of world badminton is in decline, in the singles game at least, leaving Hidayat as the pinnacle of the nation’s hopes, bringing all the associated pressures with it.

In the same interview Hartono also stated that Taufik was too old. That can’t be argued with. He won his first international title in 1999 and has been competing ever since. 30 doesn’t seem old for a sportsman, but badminton takes its toll on the body faster than most, Lin Dan and Lee Chong Wei have hinted at retiring after the Olympics and they are even younger than Taufik.

Without a title to his name since the 2010 French Open, the perfect time came to claim a winners’ medal with the two tournament tour of North America in July, though there was to be no gold for the falling giant.

The key tournament before the Olympics was undoubtedly the World Championships, staged at the same venue as a test event for the London games. There should have been little trouble until the quarters for Taufik, though he succumbed to Derek Wong in the second round.

Further failures to make any true progress at the Japan and Denmark Opens compounded a truly awful year, the lacklustre displays against Hans-Kristian Vittinghus and Viktor Axelsen in the latter demonstrating Hidayat’s woes perfectly.

The exhaustion he may be suffering is not only physical but also mental, when you watch the Indonesian in recent months there looks to be an air of complacency surrounding his play, as well as a lack of will. Hidayat himself has stated in interviews that he has fallen out of love with the sport, and to hear such a comment from a man who has built his life around the game is disheartening to say the least.

Departures in Japan and France followed, leaving his world ranking down at 8th, with the potential of losing out on Olympic qualification if his countrymen Santoso, in 11th, and Sugiarto, in 16th, overtake him, or if he drops out of the top 16 completely.

Six months are left for Hidayat to maintain his seat on the plane to London, six months that require a mental rethink if the star from Java is to get one final shot at glory. Despite his troubles the Olympic rings hanging above the Wembley courts should be inspiring enough to re-instil the passion in any sportsman, Taufik being no exception.